This new release is the recording of the first part of the 2015 Adelaide International Festival. Lento, the first track, was commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra to precede a performance of Wagner’s prelude to Parsifal and uses the same instrumentation. It consists of a sequence of major and minor triads and an implacably steady tempo, rather like Satie’s Les Pantins Dansent. Most of Lento is scored for just strings with a central section for winds alone. Those familiar with Howard Skempton’s work as a whole will recognize the same spirit, clarity of purpose and rigour that appears in his earliest works, though here transposed into a much grander environment. This release also features Gavin Bryars “The Porazzi Fragment,” “Ennelina’s Aria from ‘G,’” and “Epilogue from G,” as well as Arvo Part’s “If Bach had Been a Bookkeeper.”
